Sonja

Sonja Rush-Harvin is a die-hard team mom in a South Carolina town where football is a way of life.

“Inside the school or outside the school, the players know they can depend on me. They look up in the stands, and they expect me to be there.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

Sonja Rush-Harvin is a celebrity in the 300-person town of Greeleyville, South Carolina. Over the last 20 years, she’s touched the lives of almost every graduate of C.E Murray High School. After serving as both volleyball coach and biology teacher, she is now the school’s curriculum specialist. But she goes far beyond the job description. Every morning she arrives at the school to greet students as they get off the buses just as the sun rises. She stays late into the evenings to watch her son Darius, the star wide receiver, at football practice. She cooks hot meals to serve them as they walk off the field, and everyone on the team calls her mom.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

C.E. Murray’s student body has spirit, but Sonja is the school’s beating heart. She was always involved with the students, but after her husband’s sudden death in a car accident four years ago, she made her three children and the school her life. “When I came home it was like, ‘Oh, I have these memories,’” she says. “I'd sit and just kind of mope in my own sorrow. And so I decided to keep busy.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

Darius, her middle child, was just coming up as a football player when his father died. Sonja wrapped herself up in his team. Practices, away games, tournaments, pregame pep talks; Sonja was by the team’s side.
This year’s homecoming weekend is Darius’s last. He is graduating with honors and was voted Mr. Football 2017. Friends in the street and in the school always shout, “You the man!”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

Sonja is more than the football mom, she’s the town’s mom. She cheers on Greeleyville in the same way she cheers on her boys. “I stand at the football field when the kids are coming in and I say, ‘I got your back, I got your back,” she says. “And they tell me back, ‘I have your back, I have your back.’”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

Homecoming weekend is one the the biggest events of the year in Greeleyville. This is a town so small that the only traffic light doesn’t even turn red—it just blinks caution. But on homecoming, people flock in. They eat and laugh and tailgate. Then they gather for the game beneath the bright Friday night lights.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

This year, fans have their eye on No. 1—Darius Rush. There’s the way he reaches to make that impossible catch and how he scoops up a fumble then threads through the defensive line, legs flashing down the field for a touchdown. But they’re also watching because Darius has the kind of talent that might take him places beyond rural South Carolina.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

In the stands, Sonja doesn’t scream and shout. “I've been doing this for years and I still get the butterflies, my heart is racing,” she says. A calmness comes over her at kickoff. Even when the War Eagles make a touchdown, she remains stoic. “If I'm screaming I might miss something,” she says. “I don't want to miss anything.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

The rest of the crowd gets loud. Trumpets sound. Cymbals clash. Dancers cheer. The whole town comes out in style. People come out because they love C.E. Murray, and because the high school is about all Greeleyville’s got. “Everybody kind of filters around the school,” says Sonja, “because there’s not a lot of things going on in Greeleyville.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

Nearly every student at C.E. Murray qualifies for free or reduced lunch, a marker of the community’s poverty. There aren’t many jobs to help families pull out of it. “Ten years ago, 15 years ago, Williamsburg County was booming,” says Sonja. “We had all these companies. They have left.” It’s now among South Carolina’s poorest counties. “We're just on the bottom,” says Sonja.
For a player at C.E. Murray, a football scholarship is one of the best shots of having a future beyond this small town.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

This year, as NFL players across the country took a knee during the national anthem to protest racism, the Greeleyville team kept standing. To the War Eagles, kneeling felt like a luxury that could threaten their standing with college coaches and future teammates.
In this majority African-American town in the deep South, racism remains a topic talked about quietly, if at all. Here the all-American sport is still king.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

“I love the town, I love the school, but I want my kids to know that there's more out there beyond Greeleyville,” says Sonja. “I don't want them to miss out on the opportunities that the kids from our neighbors in Georgia and North Carolina and other places may be getting,” she says.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

“The first thing I tell my seniors is to look at your passion,” says Sonja. “What do you like? What do you love about yourself? What do you love to do? What do you love in this world? Once you find that passion, then you find your job.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

Darius’s passion has always been football. In January, he left Greeleyville, packing his bags and his football gear and his Bible and his memories and driving west to the University of South Carolina, where he has committed to being a Gamecock. It’s been his dream to play Division I. Sonja reminds him it’s not all about football.
“He knows that his mom is a stickler,” she says. “He's not just going there to play football, he has to come out with that degree and do what's necessary because football might not always be there. He needs something to rely on later in life. He knows that. Not only do I tell him that as my kid, my personal child, I tell my students that, too.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

“When I say leave, I don't want them to forget where they came from,” says Sonja. “I want them to come back and try to help make it better. I'm not telling everybody to just leave. Somebody has to stay. But I need them to at least experience the world and know that they can always come back home.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

At homecoming, they do return to Greeleyville. Sonja has taught two generations of C.E. Murray students. Kids who sat in her biology class back in the day now send their children to the school. Alumni weave through the homecoming crowd with big smiles on their faces to show Sonja their new babies.
“I'm not teaching because of the money, because believe me South Carolina was—is—the lowest paying place for teachers,” says Sonja. “I get my satisfaction from seeing a kid say, ‘Oh, I didn't know that’ or ‘You taught me this.’ Or they come back and they tell me, ‘I'm in grad school.’”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

As much as Sonja wants her kids to see the world, she worries. For all that it lacks, this tiny town nestled in the heart of the deep South has people who watch each other’s backs.
When kids leave, Sonja can’t protect them. She tells Darius, just as she told her older son, that “he has to be careful because he is an African-American kid,” she says. “Even when he's driving, I worry about him, I have him call me when he leaves home. I have him call me when he gets where he's going. I have him call me when he's returning because I need to know where he is. My biggest fear in the society is having two African-American males.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Andrea Morales

But she’s willing to let her sons and daughter go. “I want them to be successful, I want them to travel, I want them to just do things that I haven't done,” she says. She tells them, and the hundreds more she’s helped raise, “I want you to be able to take care of yourself, don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Just be able to take care of yourself.”